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BONDURANT – The Boone volleyball team opened the season winning three of six matches during Saturday’s Bondurant-Farrar Invitational.

“Considering that we had two starters sitting on the bench all day with injuries, I’d have to say we had a really good start,” Boone coach Heidi McPartland said. “We were just so competitive.”

The Toreadors (3-3) were without senior Jenni Behn and junior Bailey Schminke. Schminke returned to practice Tuesday and Behn is still battling and injury.

Boone’s first two matches included a loss to Class 5A’s No. 3 Dubuque Hempstead (3-2). The Mustangs pulled out the hard-fought win by scores of 20-22, 21-6, 15-9.

“We were kind of down a little bit, but we decided that we were going to be finishers and we were going to be competitors,” McPartland said.

Despite coming up short, the Toreadors showed plenty of fight against Hempstead.

“We felt really good about that,” McPartland said. “All of the teams we played were extremely competitive.”

Boone went on to win three straight matches before ending the tournament with a loss to Pella (6-4) as the Lady Dutch won by scores of 21-13, 21-18.

Mariah McPartland led the attack for the Toreadors as the junior connected for 25 total kills in the three victories.

“She did a nice job hitting,” McPartland said. “She went through a few slumps. We just need to work on her being more consistent.”

Boone’s coach said they’re working to spread out the hitting so opponents can’t zero in on Mariah McPartland.

“We’re going to really work on starting to move the ball around a little bit more too, because once they figure out we’re going to go to her, they’re going to be able to block her,” McPartland said.

Carrie Overland turned in strong serving. The junior converted on 27-of-29 serves in the three wins.

“We always want to make sure we start the game with Carrie,” McPartland said. “That’s our strategy because Carrie’s a very smart and aggressive server.”

Senior Gabby Woods and Overland are the team’s setters and worked to provide rhythm for the offense.

“We were pretty conservative for awhile, but then we decided to run some different options that we have and they set us up pretty well,” McPartland said.

The biggest win for the Toreadors came against Class 3A’s No. 8 Bondurant-Farrar (8-2). Boone brought down the Bluejays 21-18, 22-20.

Bondurant-Farrar has won back-to-back Raccoon River Conference titles and is yet to lose a league match since joining the RRC two years ago. Sweeping the Bluejays was a promising sign for the Toreadors.

“We feel good about that knowing that we can compete at the highest level in the conference,” McPartland said. “We can hopefully upset some people like we had hoped we would.”